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I’m always keen to try new ways to control my browser, and Opera’s Tab Commands is just that. Developed by the company that popularized tabbed browsing, I’ve been enjoying the Tab Command experience—but it could use a few tweaks.
Opera’s Tab Commands Make Tab Management Simple
First, let’s start with what really works for Opera’s Tab Commands. The new feature is currently available inOpera’s Developer Browserbut will soon be integrated into the main Opera Browser as part of its integrated Aria AI.
Indeed, theOpera Blogspecifically calls the Tab Commands “a new AI Feature Drop,” expanding Opera’s AI capabilities. Opera Tab Commands work through the Aria AI Command Line. You input what you want to happen to your tabs, and Aria auto-magically completes the task.
How Do Opera Tab Commands Work?
You can use the Tab Commands for a limited range of activities:
But, within that, you can modify the commands for specific types of browser tabs.
For example, you could input “close Wikipedia tabs,” and any open Wikipedia tabs will close. But you may extend that to a whole category of tabs: “close all news tabs” or “close social media tabs.”
The Tab Commands also work in the other direction, allowing you to group similar tabs using Opera’s Tab Island feature. You can use this command to group multiple tab types simultaneously, too. For example, “group my news tabs” finds all open news tabs and creates a Tab Island, but you can extend this to something like “group my news tabs and Wikipedia tabs.”
One feature that makes Tab Commands super useful is that they work across browser windows. So, say you’ve been researching a trip and have a bunch of Airbnb tabs open, you may command Opera to group them all together.
How Opera Could Improve Tab Commands
Now, Tab Commands is a brand new feature, so it’s still finding its feet, but some extra functionality would be great.
I’d like to see the option to have the Aria AI reopen close tabs relating to specific topics. Like most folks, I’ve accidentally closed tabs before meaning too—without realizing. Sure, you can head to your browser history, but a command to say “reopen my last five tabs on phishing scams” or any variant of that would be useful.
Another useful option relates to another Opera feature: split screen mode. Being able to say, “put my news tabs into split screen mode” would be handy, especially if you’re working on multiple technical documents or researching something.
However, there are limitations, and it’s only fair to address them. In some cases, the old methods might just be faster. I like having the option to close all of my news tabs at once, but it’s a rare occasion. I can also justCTRL + Clickthe furthest open tab to select them all and hitCTRL + W, and they’re closed.
As said, this is a new feature that already works; it’ll just get better over time.
